A legislator has asked the Attorney General Liz Murrill to investigate the Louisiana Board of Ethics. (Wesley Muller/Louisiana Illuminator)
A state lawmaker is asking the attorney general to investigate the Board of Ethics for violations of government transparency laws. He alleges the ethics board is using an illegitimate and secretive process to hire a new state ethics administrator, the board’s most important employee.
“It appears that the Board is choosing to participate in political games instead of holding itself to a higher standard,” Rep. Beau Beaullieu, R-New Iberia, wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Ethics Board Chair La Koshia Roberts and copied to Attorney General Liz Murrill.
Beaullieu hopes the inquiry could halt the current administrator hiring process. Republican legislative leaders had asked the ethics board last month to hold off on picking a new administrator until January, when most of the board will be stacked with new appointees from Gov. Jeff Landry and the Legislature.
The current ethics board membership, mostly picked by former Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, is moving quickly through the hiring process, however. It plans to have a new administrator in place by the end of December, Roberts told a reporter at the board’s Oct. 25 meeting.
The board is scheduled to interview four potential candidates in private for the job Thursday including: David Bordelon, Matthew McConnell, Charles Reeves and Scott Whitford. At least two of the candidates, Bordelon and Reeves, already work for the ethics board as staff attorneys.
This dispute over hiring is just the latest in a string of escalating disagreements between the current ethics board, the governor and his Republican allies in the Legislature.
The ethics board has reprimanded and fined Landry multiple times over the years for running afoul of campaign finance requirements and ethics laws. Shortly after becoming governor in January, he pushed through a law to seize more control over the board’s operations in 2025.
Legislators have also criticized the ethics board for being “abusive” and aggressive in their investigations of potential law violations. The board has been cracking down on the activities of political action committees run by legislators, which appears to be irritating them.
Beaullieu, a Landry ally, is the chairman of the Louisiana House and Governmental Affairs Committee that oversees the ethics board. In his letter to Roberts, he chastised ethics board members for moving too quickly to pick a new administrator and holding too much of their discussion about the new hire in private meetings on Sept. 5 and Oct. 25.
“My question in the meeting of ‘who is watching the watchers’ seems to be most appropriate in this chain of events,” Beaullieu wrote in his letter.
Beaullieu wants the attorney general to look into whether the board violated the state’s open meetings laws, which are supposed to guarantee transparency in government. State officials are required to conduct certain types of business during public meetings but can also have certain conversations about personnel matters in private.
Roberts and the current ethics administrator, Kathleen Allen, could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday.
Beaullieu also seems particularly irked that the period to apply for the ethics administrator position was open for just 10 days — from Oct. 15-25 — and not widely advertised.
“Such a short timeframe for advertising an important role limits the opportunity for a diverse applicant pool,” he wrote. “It appears the board met the minimum timeline requirements to advertise the position, but with no greater effort.”
In this case, Beaullieu alleges too much of the ethics board’s conversations about the retirement of Allen, its current administrator, and the hiring of her replacement has taken place behind closed doors.
Specifically, Beaullieu alleges the board did not take the required public vote at its Sept. 5 meeting to enter into a private session to discuss its applicant search. He also said details of what would be discussed at that meeting weren’t properly advertised beforehand or recorded. Many of the decisions made in that private session – including when the ethics administrator would be advertised – should also have been debated in public, he said.
Beaullieu’s letter also accused the board of acting inappropriately at its Oct. 25 meeting, when it did not specify whether it would discuss a written request from Louisiana Senate President Cameron Henry, R-Metairie, to delay hiring of a new administrator until January. If Henry’s request was discussed in the board’s private session, the board has violated the state’s open meetings law because the matter should have been discussed at a public meeting, Beaullieu alleges.
In an interview Wednesday, Beaullieu said he had not discussed his request for an investigation with Henry or the attorney general before sending the letter.
This is a developing story. Please check back for more details.